Formality
by chicletsquared
Summary: When you come face to face with what you're willing to do and who you're willing to do it to. A one-shot reflection from the point of view of the Inquisitor, featuring the ever-handsome Commander.


"Inquisitor?"

The voice drifts over the music and babble from below, a singular thread of amber and I look up without intending to, caught before I can stop myself. The habitual half smile hooks at the corner of his mouth as his gaze meets mine, but his eyes are quiet in their shadows as he hesitates between word and motion, his head tilted to track. There's a question forming there and I drag my eyes away before anything on my face answers it. Smile? Don't smile? I'm not sure. I am not Leliana to control everything I am.

Maker take it, I wish I was. And the irony of the thought is not lost on me.

Leave me alone, I think, so of course he doesn't. Out of the corner of my eye I see the decision made; the half heartbeat that turns him towards me when perhaps he only meant to acknowledge and move on.

And I know that part of it is simple curiosity. I have places I belong and this isn't one of them. When I come here at all I'm deep in the rough camaraderie that roils downstairs, buried and safe in the heat of the qunari captain's crew where the noise and the boasts and the drink keep all the things, keep every thing afloat. No questions anywhere in the light, only stories told in varying shades of truthfulness and a guess at the end as to the mix of it.

Tonight is a single bench against a badly fitted wall on the second floor that gives enough corner to lean back against, an impromptu alcove. A dark booted foot propped up on the scarred wood to brace me into it and enough shadow to disguise the color of my hair under a loose hood.

First rule; never over complicate unless the intention is to be the distraction. I am anyone and no one, nursing a drink.

He rarely makes noise that he doesn't mean to and tonight is no exception. He's fur and bulk and an advancing shadow that sits on the end of the bench I've warded off from others. Does he even understand that about himself? Sometimes I don't think he does, it seems so far below his awareness like so many other pieces of him are. How many fights do I have to be in, I wonder hazily, before I too can move like that? A hundred? A thousand? More?

Stray light catches the chasing on a vambrace as he settles, looking over at me still with his head half cocked. If I stretch out my foot, I could put it on his thigh, he's that close.

"Inquisitor."

And that's a shiver he can't see, damned if I'll ever let him see it. His voice is as much of a weapon as his sword.

"So formal?" I try to tease but it falls flat somehow. I take another burning swallow of poison to cover it.

"Well, you _are_ still in your armor." His fingers twitch as if they meant to gesture but it's more his continued half smile that's the goad.

"So are you," I shoot back. "I'm pretty sure the Dalish aren't going to choose tonight to storm Skyhold to air their grievances, you know. You could stand to lose a few pieces yourself, Commander."

A swift grin, a flash of white teeth for that. "Well, I'd offer to take mine off if you take yours, but we wouldn't want to tempt the clans into anything rash now, would we?"

While I'm gaping at him, he reaches across and plucks the battered pewter cup from my hand. His nostrils flare over it.

"I could almost name you the grave that came from," he remarks after a moment. "Why didn't you leave it where you found it?"

"Maker forfend. I don't bury what I can't pronounce." I'm scrambling after the words, fast and light. Deflect, defer, slide to the side. "I bring it back to let somebody pore over the cryptic glyphs and in this case I'm told it said "Drink Me'."

That provokes an actual laugh, low and rumbling. The dirty green of the bottle itself is tucked hard against my hip, wedged against the wall and chosen more for its portability tonight than anything else. I have no complaints; it's doing the job I picked it for.

He waggles the cup at me so I oblige and hand it over. He pours it full and this time he knows better than to sniff at it, taking it all in a single snap, his throat swallowing. His long eyes close; not in appreciation but more likely to hold back any involuntary tears. His profile is clean and unguarded in this instant, here in my shadow. Anyone and no one, sharing a drink in a tavern.

Ser Cullen. Commander of the Inquisition's armies, swelling every day as men and women flock to us to save them, to offer their swords and lives and fears and hopes and yes, even their treacheries and greed. We're building a juggernaut, after all, to crush whatever gets in our way because we can't afford anything less and he's the one that directs the bodies it's made up of, aims it with either precision and raw brutality where required. The absolute hammer of our combined wills.

Does he know that about himself as well? He must. Somewhere, he must.

I've seen his profile like this more times than I can count as he argues with the others; pushing his markers of influence across the map, pointing out weaknesses and strengths as I struggle to understand as fast as I can, to make as few mistakes as I can, knowing that every answer means blood on the ground. Knives thrust into the wood through the thick vellum, pinning markers down of places and decisions we can't turn back from.

And over and over I've watched his gauntleted hands bring life to the map, names of places I've never seen before, never even knew existed before his voice described them, before I went to them and discovered them myself, sand and mud and swamp and rain enough to drown the world.

And I'm watching his fingers nearly dwarf a cup of silver and his lips have touched a place that was warm from mine.

"I lied to Leliana today." The words I didn't intend to say fall into the space between us, dropping like dull coins to the floor.

"Did you now." His eyes open at that and he tries again to catch my gaze. His body shifts in the turn and my foot does jam itself against his hip then but he doesn't seem to notice or mind. "Can I ask why, Inquisitor?"

"I don't know." The automatic volley rises to my lips before I can stop it, the half a lifetime of furious arguments with my father beneath them in perfect riposte, precision in language to hone the edges that words can make. "Can you?"

He doesn't know and that's apparently worth laughter as well, the sweet burr of it washing over me and my throat closes. I have definitely, I decide, been drinking too much. "As you say. Allow me to start again: why did you lie to the one person here who lives for the advantage in it?"

I lick my lips, I'm not even sure why and his face softens at the edges. He pours another and hands it to me. And I know better than to stop either and down it goes, hot enough to burn cold, curling in my stomach like a snake to match its brothers. My head falls back to the sliver of wall and I rest my forearm on my upraised knee. Stare at the cup dangling from my fingers like it might actually be able to scry an answer I like better from it.

"Don't you want to know what I lied about?"

"No." His voice is gentle. Peripheral vision picks out glinting detail at throat and knee but the gloom up here is enough to defeat the exact expression of his face if I don't look. "Tell me why."

And memory skips like a gleeful child. Her face, the hard slice of righteous anger. A knife plunged into a wooden table, blood on the patterned marble floor, sister and friend and enemy crumpled at my feet for all the world like a gift from a pet trying to please. The Divine herself reaching out from her earthly grave as she'd maybe tried to reach us from the unearthly one, still trying to control her creation. Still playing games. Still moving pieces across a map she'd, Maker take her, been _removed_ from.

"Because. Because I still need her to believe." The words come slow and raw, but they come, vicious with another kind of poison. "Because I need her to _do her job_. Because we cannot afford to have the Left Hand fail in her purpose. Not now." The pressure wells up from the churning in my gut that has nothing to do with the alcohol I've poured on top to drown it. "Because 'not now' means never. Because she has to believe in order to keep going, to not fall apart. Andraste's howling voice, what am I turning _into_? I didn't even hesitate."

And I'm staring into the tiny little bowl and it's gold and red with candlelight and death and the sick, slow realisation that I know exactly what I have to say, the precise words that will thrust into Leliana's heart and lodge there like a snapped tip, cauterizing a wound that will never bleed again.

"Because all the choices mean bodies on the ground, _you_ taught me that."

Justification and bandage and blessing all at once, the one lie she'll never question because I buried it too deep, too fast, curse my father in his grave for ever teaching me how it could be done.

"And she did, Cullen. _Believed_. I saw it on her face. She won't falter now, won't stop, I've made sure she can't, Maker judge me for it, a knife in the dark, yes, but _my_ knife now, not hers anymore because we need her, need her to keep going but I'm a liar and I _lied_ because I'm the one that told her it was _necessary_ even though it's _not_. "

And I don't even realise I've hurled the cup against the far wall before I'm half standing, hearing it bounce, his hand locked around my bicep to forestall anything else.

Snarl into his face because I don't know what else to do, how to express this hurt, this fear, tied up somehow in the taste of copper and dread and drink, slick across the wideness of his eyes and the surprised tightness of his face. I can smell his skin suddenly, we're so close.

"It was necessary!"

Wasn't it?

His face closes over like a storm and a heartbeat later his hand is in my hair somehow, tight and fast under the loose hood. Unyielding armor and the rough threads of his hair are knotting under my hands in some sort of translated alchemy of motion and then the world simply explodes. His mouth tastes like fire and lightning, the rough abrasion of his face moving against mine. He kisses like he fights, without hesitation and without remorse and he gives and gives even as I take.

One, five, a hundred, I don't even know, here at the edge of the light pouring up from below. Out of nowhere my shoulders impact the wall, a welcome shock and I'm arching even as he growls, his other hand closing hard over my thigh under the surcoat, gripping tight to pull me back half under him and it's all I can do not to cry out and maybe I do, sweetly frantic, hidden in a burst of music.

He stops, an utter stillness radiating out from the center. The crazy pulse of my heart is on the tip of my tongue, I can hear it in the echo of his rough breathing with his breath still sweet on my face. He breaks the kiss and for a second I can't even think. Everything has scattered suddenly, broken into brilliant shards much too small to pick up.

He tastes so good and I want so much more.

"I'm sorry," he says. "That wasn't... that's not what I intended. I just… Maker take me for a fool." The curse is heartfelt, deep with tremors. His forehead rests against mine and for all I know, the entire world has stopped existing past the curve of his shoulders. "You did what you needed to do. Trust yourself. I do."

Swallow thickly because that is not anything I'd ever expected to hear. "In the Herald of Andraste, Chosen of the Maker." I barely recognize my own voice.

His hand tightens on the back of my neck, a warning shake.

"Don't. I believe. In you."

"I lied to her. And I'll lie to you too." But the words are shaky, soft enough to fall apart even as I say them. I shudder and then shudder again, I don't even know why except that he's still touching me and I'm suddenly near to tears.

He pulls back at that and he moves, sliding away, standing. But before I can do more than catch my breath, he folds his long body as graceful as any courtier he's ever laughed at, his blonde head bowing over one knee in front of me in prayer as he has done so many times before at Andraste's altar. And I'm looking down at the top of his head in blank astonishment.

But my hands can't, won't stop touching him now, reaching out to stroke his hair over and over as if they have the right and maybe they do. And when he lifts his face I touch that too, drifting fingertips over the thin skin at his temple, touching the corners of his eyes, his mouth. I trace the seam of a scar without thinking about it and he permits that as well, unblinking.

"I'll let you." Amber and gold, his voice is pitched just enough to be heard, his eyes intent on mine. "I've survived a broken circle, torture, near madness at the hands of my enemies. I survived Kirkwall at the hands of my _friends_. I left the Templars of my own will, against everything I once believed, and survived. Lyrium.. lyrium _never_ stops singing and somehow I'll survive that too." Rough, fierce. "Maker open your eyes, I understand _necessary_."

My fingers are spread wide at his jaw, the anchor against his skin and he doesn't flinch.

"Cullen."

Except I have nothing else to say after that. And I'm watching his eyes darken from gold to black as the seconds tick by and the sound rises and falls below us like a different ocean because the world hasn't stopped existing even if the axis of it has shifted and in a heartbeat I'm going to be the one kissing him and I'm not ready for that, I'm not ready at all, not with my belly full of heat and poison and the urge to sink my teeth into his throat to get to the taste of blood.

I walk away, pulling the hood up over my hair, anyone and no one and I don't look back.


End file.
